Friday, 30 December 2016

There's something so special about walks in the Winter. Especially when the day is crisp and frosty, with a beautiful cold Sun. Yesterday was one of those days, and so my family and I took a trip to Tewkesbury for a walk around The Ham with the pooch.

Considering I have lived so near to Tewkesbury town all my life, it's shocking how little time I've actually spent walking around the town. The town itself is a characterful place to wander around, but The Tewkesbury Ham is such a lovely peaceful place to go, & provided an excellent opportunity to take out my camera again. I've walked around The Ham before, but the way the it looked yesterday with the Winter Sun on the super still water was amazing. There were also massive sheets of ice on the grass, which the sun was also reflecting off, creating a picturesque scene- even if I was then super anxious walking across the ice! I had never properly appreciated Tewkesbury until yesterday, and realised that sometimes what's right on your doorstep can get overlooked.

-- AshCam

Sunday, 9 October 2016

After recently returning to blogging I have begun updating a few details on my site. As some of you may know from reading previous posts, I am currently half way through a degree for Fashion Design at Winchester School of Art. Every now and then I have written posts showing some of my work from the previous term, and I know quite a few of you are interested in my work. I have, therefore, decided to add a 'Portfolio' page to my blog where you can have a look at my current portfolio of work from my degree.

I'm more than happy to answer questions about my work and degree, so please feel free to ask anything in the comments section below or on the portfolio page. I'm also thinking to write more posts on fashion degrees in future, so let me know if this is something you'd be interested in hearing about, or if there's a certain aspect you'd like me to cover.

Tuesday, 12 April 2016

I've never been the biggest fan of swimming, whether as a sport or just as a recreational activity. It's not that I disliked it as such, more just indifferent- although I definitely did hate swimming lessons in school, but I don't think I'm alone with that haha! However, over the past two weeks I've gone swimming with my Mum and have loved it.

The pool we've been going to is a privately owned pool, that people can hire for a swimming session, and for me this is one of the best parts, because you literally have the pool to yourself, completely undisturbed, which is a real rarity in a public swimming pool. There's something really relaxing about swimming that means it doesn't even feel like you're doing exercise, however, in reality it's probably one of the best activities to do as it just about works every muscle in your body! From doing this swimming I am now really inspired and determined to get fit in time for the Summer months. I honestly never thought I would be someone to promote swimming- like ever - but here I am writing a blog post about it, who knows, maybe I'll try running next??! One thing's for sure, with all this swimming, I'm going to want to start expanding my swimwear collection-- expect a swimwear wishlist on here soon haha!

I hope you enjoyed this post, bit different from things I usually write on here, but let me know if reading this gets you inspired to go swimming, or just drop me a comment below- I love replying!

Music is a big part of my day-to-day life, and I do not go a day without listening to songs on my ipod. After a few recent song purchases, I put together a playlist which I have been listening to a lot during March, and I thought I would share it with you. There's both upbeat songs inspired by the sunny Spring weather that we are beginning to get glimpses of here in England, and then the slower ones for those rainy days where you stare out the window and pretend your in some sort of emotional music video....anyway hope you enjoy, and let me know if you give it a listen!

With more and more glimpses of Sun these past couple of weeks, I have been getting excited about digging to the backs of my wardrobe and drawers to get out my Spring/Summer clothing. This weather has also had me seeking style and clothing items in the new Spring lines in stores and online. After finding many pieces I loved, I compiled a smaller list of my favourites of these, and thought I'd share with you my Spring wishlist of items I would buy for the new season if I had unlimited money.
I hope you enjoyed this post, and get some Spring-style inspiration, I love putting these together and would love to hear which items you like!

Monday, 28 March 2016

So... it's been a while... a very long while. I didn't mean to stop writing blog posts for so long, but one week off turned into two, and two in turn evolved into over a month! I have wanted so badly to write posts, but have literally had absolutely no spare time to put together posts that I would be happy to put up on here. Juggling my intense fashion degree work, interviews for internships, social life and tonnes of trips to London has become really difficult in recent weeks and I'm not ashamed to admit I've struggled to keep on top of it. However, it is now my Easter holidays, and I am hoping to get back on track with work and start cracking on with writing blog posts again! I'm annoyed that I've let my blog slide this year, because I thought I would be able to handle writing posts and doing all the work that my degree entails, especially since I've seen many other bloggers handle it with ease. Plus I was doing so well over Christmas and New Year with continuing to write posts twice a week, so I am desperate to get back to doing that- though, bare with me whilst I re-find my blogging feet! I promise my content will begin to improve and increase again in the weeks to come!

Monday, 22 February 2016

I have desperately wanted to go to the USA for years, however, mainly want to go to New York. As someone who is passionate about fashion and style, New York is an obvious attraction, but also I want to experience the busy, bustling lifestyle typical to here, and be a proper tourist too, seeing all the sights.

This is actually a recent discovery- I'm an avid follower of the YouTuber Nika Erculj, and in both her instagram and YouTube posts I have seen some beautiful scenery, and after finding out she lives in Slovenia I now really want to visit the country. The capital, Ljubljana, is one of the greenest cities in the world and Lake Bled (in image above) looks so beautiful! Plus I have a thing for mountains and forests, so this is clearly a perfect place for those things!

Saturday, 20 February 2016

A couple of weeks ago I went to London to do some fabric shopping and visit my sister and a friend, and when we were there we popped into a few shops whilst walking around on the Saturday. One of the shops we went into was Urban Outfitters, and for me this was quite a treat because I don't get a chance to go into Urban Outfitters stores very often because there are literally none near to wear I live! I had heard so many people rave about their home-wear and gifts sector, and so this was also the first time I was physically able to mooch around and have a look at those sorts of items sold in the shop. Whilst I didn't buy anything from in there (sad times), I came away hugely inspired and thought I would share some of my favourite home & gift items that I came across whilst browsing through their shelves, making them into an Urban Outfitters Wishlist!

Monday, 8 February 2016

I know how most '2016 goals' posts are written as soon as January starts, but I personally take January to think about what I want to achieve over the next year, so, for me, it makes more sense to write my goals now after having a month of thinking about it. I love reading these posts and find them really inspiring, so if I can give you guys some enjoyable reading and new year inspiration, then I'll be happy!

Friday, 29 January 2016

As you may have read in my last post [link here] I have finished my first semester of my 2nd year of Fashion Design at WSA. We had a total of 4 different projects, 3 of them were practical coursework, and one was a written assessment. Two of these projects involved designing collections and making outfits from the designs, so like I did with my first ever semester of Fashion Design, I thought I'd share with you the final photos of the outfits I created from each of the projects, and give a little explanation of what the projects are about. I'm partly doing this because I find learning about people's courses really interesting, but also because when I was looking to learn more about fashion courses when applying for uni, there was nothing out there, so I want to give students a place to go for finding out about how fashion design courses work. So please, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments section and I will always try my best to answer them!

| METAMORPHOSIS |

This project was all about embellishing fabrics to really make the garments individual, so that the materials you use have really been developed into something you've developed yourself. This meant there was a lot of sample work as well as development of designs for creating the final collection. The inspiration for designs and samples had to be based on a sense- I chose to focus my project on touch, specifically looking at nerves, nerve cells, finger prints, and the actual skin. From this I explored many fabric embellishing techniques like applique, embroidery, fraying and layering, all of which are somehow featured within my 6-outfit line-up. The final outfit I made were a relatively minimal/simplistic design, but the 2 fabric manipulation layering techniques I used on each of them were what brought the design to life and made it unique. As you can see in the final photos below, the layering on the top involves a lot of fraying, and oh my word fraying those individual squares took absolutely ages! I'm not kidding when I say that fraying squares for the front and back took a whole day- it's so fiddly! I love the outcome though, so it was definitely worth it! I also absolutely love the fabrics I used for these garments, I wanted to make the fabrics tactile as well as the actual embellishments, so I used beautiful chiffon, velvet, and satin fabrics.

[Model: Charlotte James (instagram)]

| REMAKE/REDESIGN |

This project was kind of two projects in one brief, and they were treated as two parts during semester 1. The first few weeks of the project focused on Remake- this involved choosing a sufficiently complex existing designer menswear outfit and attempting to remake it ourselves. This meant working on patterns, learning new construction techniques and perfecting small details, which gave us all a real challenge, and allowed us to learn a lot of new skills to take forward into future projects. It also meant learning to work a bit more independently on the pattern work and construction, something which we all struggled with at first, but has been very rewarding in hind-sight. For my remake project, I chose an outfit from Thom Browne's SS14 collection, and I feel I've managed to replicate it well. Part two of this brief was 'redesign' which involved us putting a new spin on the remake garment we chose. We could do this many ways, however, I decided to take specific design details from Thom Browne's designs in the SS14 collection, and combine them on a more contemporary design. I wanted to do this because his collection was directly related to old-fashioned military-wear, and also had quite an effeminate twist on it, so I wanted to create something more modern, so designed a shirt that was long, loose fitting and very casual. I also altered the shorts design from something very exagerated in shape and almost costume, to a design more slick and modern. I actually really love my redesign outfit, especially the shorts which include some wonderful pockets which unfortunately aren't shown in these photos.

[Model: Sam Beckwith-Cole]

I really hope you found this post both interesting and informative, and as I said previously, if you have any questions about a Fashion Design course, please ask them in the comments - I always reply to all comments, and am more than happy to answer any Q's you may have! Additionally, if you are interested in keeping up with the work I do during term time, the best way to do this is to follow me on my instagram [@ashcam96] where I post many updates on each project I do! Thanks for reading!